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| Wood Warbler |
With the exception of one failed twitch, see here, I’m still sticking with my pseudo local spring birding and thoroughly enjoying it. For an infinitesimal small period of time I did consider a mega twitch to Shetland to see a ultra-rare American sparrow but soon dismissed this foolish thought. Good job as it turns out because it was a short lived one day wonder.
So this Tuesday, with perhaps the last of this lovely weather for a while, I hatched a plan to spend most of the day in the forest again followed by an evening trip to try and see Nightjars on the Cannock Chase. I’ve mentioned before that my plan this spring is to try and get more familiar with the habitat and wildlife at Wyre by making multiple visits. I’ve been trying, at least for part of the time, to avoid my well-worn paths and instead explore new areas of the forest.
This week I also had another particular target bird in mine, the Spotted Flycatcher, a comparatively late migrant from Africa. I often use bird reports from the Portland bird observatory to help focus my birding efforts and the reports from the last ten days or so indicated they were arriving on mass.
I parked in my usual spot, the Hawkbatch carpark, and walked down the well-made track towards the forest valley. Compared to my last visit two weeks ago, the vegetation had moved on significantly and the whole forest was bathed in a shimmering verdant green light from the perfusion of eye catching fresh lime green foliage. The bluebells were now passed their best but the wild garlic still carpeted the forest floor in a perfusion of snow white. The spring cacophony of song from common warblers, Chiffchaffs, Willow Warblers and Blackcaps, still seemed to be coming from every bush and tree. As late spring progresses into early summer the forest will become a lot quieter as the birds concentrate less on defending territories and more on raising the next generation of songsters.
I kept an ear out for the song on the Spotted Flycatcher, a series of scratchy warbles and higher-pitched notes, but, given all the other birds in song, it wasn’t easy and I resorted to my Merlin app to try and help me. Maybe halfway down to the stream that runs centrally through the forest valley I saw a promising looking greyish blob sat atop a distant tall tree which was quickly confirmed through my bins as a Spotted Flycatcher. It’s a good job I paused to check this distant blob as, apart from some distant song, that was it for the day. Not the views I had hoped for to be honest but at least I had seen one.
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| Pied Flycatcher |
The Wood Warbler activity had also changed from being mostly quiet to insistent singing. I sat for an hour or so drinking my coffee as a male hopped around the branches while all the time hammering out his distinctive song. He was bathed in vibrant green light reflected from the lush foliage which gave his whole body a greenish tinge. You can see this in some of my pictures where his white breast has taken on a clear green tinge.
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| Wood Warbler |
Grey Wagtails were active all along the brook. They were highly mobile and hence impossible to count but there were certainly multiple pairs.
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| Grey Wagtail |
As the morning progress the bird song started to become less intense. To be honest, it’s a law of diminishing returns and by early afternoon apart from the odd Chiffchaff or Blackcap song burst it was fairly quiet.
That evening I made my way over to Cannock Chase hoping to connect with an iconic spring arrival, the Nightjar. They are corpuscular birds who in one form or another are found spread around most of the world with a rather astonishing 89 separate species. When I found this out I checked how many were on my world list. The answer was a rather paltry 4 so just 85 to go!
The European Nightjar prefers habitat that is dry, open country with some trees and small bushes, such as heaths, forest clearings or newly planted woodland. The male European Nightjar occupies a territory in spring and advertises his presence with a distinctive sustained churring song from a perch. He patrols his territory with wings held in a V and tail fanned, chasing intruders while wing-clapping and calling. Like the Barn Owl, their soft highly fractalated plumage makes them silent on the wing.
The European Nightjar has greyish-brown upperparts with dark streaking, a pale buff hindneck collar and a white moustachial line. The closed wing is grey with buff spotting, and the underparts are greyish brown, with brown barring and buff spots. The bill is blackish, the iris is dark brown and the legs and feet are brown. That’s all well and good but at night you will only see a ghostly silhouette zooming around the heath. You will need to find one at roost to appreciate how well camouflaged these birds are when on the ground. I was lucky enough to see one roosting on a tree at Arne RSPB a number of years back and here is a picture of that encounter.
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| Nightjar Arne RSPB |
I arrived early evening and set about looking for the best habitat as per above. There are large areas of heathland at Cannock that look ideal and, from chatting to locals on a previous visit, I know that reasonable numbers of this enigmatic moth hunter are present. For some reason the phrase “there is something of the night about him”, a famous comment by UK Conservative Party politician Ann Widdecombe on her colleague Michael Howard in 1997, came to mind!
The chase was alive with evening song and I saw Common Whitethroat and Chiffchaffs with beaks leaden with insects to feed their eagerly waiting chicks. It's hard to imagine this Chiffchaff could have got more insects in its beak even if it tried. Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers can, apart from their song, be difficult to tell apart but the dark black legs and pale supercilium of this individual make it a Chiffchaff. A word of caution the odd Willow Warbler can also have dark legs approaching that of the Chiffchaff. A good tip when they are flitting about in bushes giving obscured views, Chiffchaffs constantly wag their tail while Willow Warblers only flick their tail occasionaly.
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| Chiffchaff |
Around about 21:00 a not forecast light rain started to fall and I thought this might put the kibosh on my attempt to see the Nightjar. Come 21:40 it was almost dark but as I walked along a path next to the heathland I heard the unmistakable churring noise of a male Nightjar. Moments later it flew past my head, perhaps only a meter or so away. Its wings were raised in its characteristic v shape, quite a surreal experience as I was alone apart from my moth chasing friend in the near dark. I saw him flash by a couple of times more by which time it was nearly pitch black so I made my way back to my car contented and enthralled by my night-time encounter with the wonderful Nightjar.
Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!
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